I am trying to connect a usb powered smartdisk firelite portable external hard drive to my emac. The light comes on the drive but it doesn't appear on the monitor. It worka on my apple laptop. Is it a case of not enough power from the emac usb port? Thanks.
eMac-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
Hello,
If you didn't get a USB overcurrent warning, then it's likely got enough power.
Is your eMac USB1.1 or USB2? USB1.1 could take a very long time to show up on the eMac.
In Finder>Preferences>General, what items are checked to show? Also in Sidebar tab, what is checked?
So we know more about it...
At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac, report the version of OSX from that window, then click on More Info, then click on Hardware> and report this upto but not including the Serial#...
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: eMac
Model Identifier: PowerMac6,4
Processor Name: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
Processor Speed: 1.42 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.9.2f1
It does have a USB 1.1. So I waited a for several minutes, you said it could take a long time, and low and behold it appeared on the screen. Thank you for the answer.
Great news, glad I could help, thanks & good luck! 🙂
BD has you fixed up with a great observation on USB 1.1
A couple of other things:
1) even though you now have the drive working, remember that electric motors like those that turn the platter in yout new external drive can, with time, begin to demand more power than when new. The underpower warning could show up down the road. We've seen it reported here many times---the drive works fine for a year or two then, out of nowhere, starts evoking those dreaded power warnings.
Get an POWERED USB hub and you will not have a future problem, plus you have additional USB ports for other things.
2) Most external drives come formatted for Windows. Macs can read/write to them so this often get overlooked:
If you do not need to share the new external with a Windows computer, consider using Disk Utiltiy to reformate the drive as Apple Extended (Journaled). A number of reports here suggest this can delay or eliminate the overpower issue, and drive access may be faster.
Curoius: does your new drive have a FireWire port? If it does, use it. The speed difference will blow you hair back!
Allan
Can an eMAC usb port power a Smartdisk Firelite
